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4th of July

Ah, the long weekend - I'm looking forward to you.



I can now confirm that the American Challenge Speed Record attempt will take place July 4th on the Bonneville Salt Flats. I, unfortunately, can't be there but some of my Autodesk colleagues will be on site and I'll have first hand feedback along with images from them on July 4th and 5th which I'll share with you. I was doing some research on land speed records and since 1950 the land speed record has been broken 14 times - this weekend could make 15. If you get a chance, check back in on July 4th and catch up on the news.

Here's wishing good luck to Russ Wicks and his team this weekend!

Happy 4th of July

American Challenge follow up

I spent more time with the American Challenge engineering team. These guys are on a really tight timeline and cruising along with their use of Inventor for this project.

I can tell you a bit more about their project. One of the key elements of any car seeking a record is the aerodynamics and the spoiler of a vehicle has a huge impact on that. Russ's team is spending a lot of energy on the spoiler design. They created multiple versions of a spoiler and are using simulation testing to determine which one is the best to capture the record. Now that the simulation testing is complete, the model is back into Inventor for final tweaking before it goes to manufacturing. There's a lot of detail in the middle I'm not capturing but I'll be able to share more of their workflow in July.

Tomorrow I should have a few images...

There was a lot of excitement on the American Challenge announcement yesterday - check out some of the coverage at tenlinks.

Tokyo

Last week I had the priveldge of visiting the Japan team. I was invited to present at the Japan Inventor User Group meeting and to attend the DMS trade show, both happening in Tokyo.

The User group meeting was Thursday, June 22nd. Beginning in the early evening the user group meeting began with a through review by the board of the group's status since its inception this time last year. Progress on local user group resources was given. This included an update on a dedicated Japanese discussion form for user group members to connect.

Key members of Autodesk Japan kicked off the event and thanked everyone for joining. Here Tetsuya Shiga, Vice President, Autodesk Japan, starts the event.


The board, made up of 8 users from local Tokyo companies, outlined the group's next initiatives. These included:
Get more users from each company to attend. Today most companies only send one user and they are expected to return from meetings and share what they learn with their peers. The user group board would like to get multiple, if not all users, from the company to attend and connect thereby increasing the speed and quality of information shared within the community.
Increase awareness about the user group and Increase awareness about Inventor
Collect thoughts on how Inventor could be a better product for the Japanese market and prioritize these. The board would then work with Autodesk to champion these improvements.


I presented an hour of tips and tricks or best practices to the audience of about 60.
* Part Modeling and sketching
* Assembly modeling
* Drawing production

After this session there was a break and group photo.


Following the break the user group meeting opened up to non-members, prospective members, and prospective Inventor customer who were just curious.

Several presentations were given talking about the Autodesk Community in Japan and I was able to show a 45 minute presentation and demonstration of Autodesk Inventor 11.
This was a fun event and had 100+ attendees!

We then made for the ballroom next door where food and drinks were available. If you have never been to an after business "Cocktail hour" in Japan, let me tell you that this is where most of the action happens! I had the opportunity to answer many enthusiastic questions.

These are not glasses of iced-tea! That is a whole lot of Whisky.


A raffle was then held to give out gifts to user group members. The evening ended with a private meeting with the board to discuss future events and support. I was very impressed with the organized and professional nature of the group. The users were engaged, excited an interested in sharing information. All of this makes for what I hope will continue as a strong vibrant user group.

The next day I attended the DMS show. This, large manufacturing trade show highlights technology from around the world. Jump to the Japan Team's site to read more about DMS (in Japanese)

I saw rapidprotyping machine creating full body panes in multiple colors, Machining centers and virtually displays!

Autodesk was on had with a large booth covering our complete manufacturing solution.
Autodesk AliasStudio, Autodesk, Intent, AutoCAD Electrical, AutoCAD Mechanical, Autodesk Inventor, Autodesk Productstream, and DWF were all featured on kiosks and the main stage. Check out the crowd!


It was a great show and I enjoyed seeing the Autodesk Japan team and meeting with many, many many trade show attendees!

I wrapped up my trip with a fun walk around the city and the Emperial Palace. I look forward to my next trip back. I just hop it will be a little less humid!

American Challenge Speed Record Team, led by Russ Wicks

I wanted to draw your attention to an announcement made today from Autodesk. We're sponsoring the American Challenge Speed Record Team, led by Russ Wicks.

What Russ and team is chassing to so cool - especially if, like me, you're into racing and cars. Russ has gathered together an all-star crew of engineers, mechanics and technology specialists to pursue a series of speed records.

The first one he's after, a world land speed record, is set to take place this July in the Bonneville Salt Flats outside Salt Lake City, Utah. The exact details are still a secret but I'm working with the engineering team now as they use AliasStudio and Inventor to design some of the key vehicle elements. These guys are deep into the process, using Inventor to enhance the design, speed and stability of the vehicle for its race. Every change they make can shave milliseconds off the time and make a huge impact on their success.

Before I wrap up for today I wanted to throw a piece of trivia out there about land speed records, the first land speed record was set in 1898 and the vehicle was going a hot 39.24 MPH - I think we've come a long way since then. I encourage you to check back every few days - I'll be releasing more information as it comes my way.

Great Things Come in Small Packages

Autodesk DWF Composer just got a new name, Autodesk Design Review. And the name says it all: New and improved, purpose-built tools help streamline designs' round trip from concept through review, markup and approval. That's great news for sharing digital design information over the course of the product development cycle - especially with suppliers, the manufacturing shop floor, customers and others who don't use design software and can't accommodate data-intensive files.

There are big advances in 2D and 3D review, including capabilities for importing DWG and DXF files, 3D pull-apart and cross-sectioning, new batch publishing capabilities and printing and viewing in black and white, making the review process even easier. Enhanced measure and markup capabilities, the ability to combine 2D and 3D project data into a single file, automatic tracking of all changes, and tighter integration with all Autodesk design products mean more powerful, compact reviewing technology for users of Autodesk software. Plus team members who work in collaboration with Autodesk Inventor customers can now analyze assembly instructions, BOM data, Inventor representations, and FEA results published from Autodesk Inventor 11 DWF Extension.

For a full list of new features and benefits visit: www.autodesk.com/designreview.

Autodesk Inventor Used For Factory Design

Read a short but interesting profile of an unusual Inventor user by Jeff Rowe.
The click through link to MCADCAFE is here.

888 Racing in the UK

Visit the web site for a company in the UK called 888 Racing.
You will find some images of cars sposored through a partnership between ATI and Autodesk.
Browse through the site and you might catch a glimps of parts made with Invnetor...

Click on the links below for a larger version:

View image


View image

Soft(er) shadows

Inventor studio supports two types of shadows
Sharp shadows
Soft shadows
When you want a rendering with soft edge shadows similar to what soft or natural outdoor light might cause you need to use... soft shadows.


This is easy to do by simply selecting the soft shadow button in the shadow parameters tab for an Inventor studio light style.

Here is a simple part scene in Inventor Studio


Here is a look at it rendered with soft shadows turned on.


Shadows look nice, but not soft...

This is because soft shadows calculate off a percentage of the model size. If we were to render an assembly things would look much softer because the model is much larger.

So how do we get soft shadows on a small part?

We add a little construction geometry. I usually do this by creating a surface behind where the camera I use for the rendering. Switch out of the Inventor Studio environment and add a workplane in space in the direction that your studio camera is located. make sure that the plane is well past where the camera is so that when you render the plane does not obstruct your view.

In this image you can see the plane I created and its' position relative to the model.


After a test render I realized that the shadows are still not soft enough so I made the surface bigger. The small black dot is actually my part model!


Note: In Inventor Studio edit the surface's material to make it fully transparent with black specular. This will prevent it from appearing in any reflections.

Here is what the final rendering looks like. It perfect with nice soft shadows.


So next time you are using Inventor Studio and what softer shadows just add a large construction surface and adjust its size until you get the results you are looking for.
Send me some of your renders and I'll post them here!

Workplane Front or Back?

Workplanes have a front and back side ( no jokes pleasse). when you create a sketch on a workplane the front side of the plane is used to set the orientation (Z+) direction for a sketch. Often times you might want to be able to change this.

You can. Workplanes have always offered an option to flip normal. You can get to this option via the context menu for the work plane.

Problem is what is the front side of a workplane?

In Inventor 11 this is now easy to determine. The front and back sides of workplanes are now different colors.
The front will be the same color as the boundary. In the images here the front is yellow.



The back will be some other clearly different color. In the images here the back color is red-ish.